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When it comes to marketing your brand on Twitter, there are several ways to go about it. You can pay to have your sponsored tweets appear in the trending topics. You can come up with a clever tweet that’s worthy of being retweeted and shared among the masses. Tough, but it’s possible. Or here’s my idea. What if Twitter created a new ad model where brands pay whenever users post a tweet about their brand?

If they agree to join this ad model, whenever tweets mention their brands with a hashtag, then a logo, icon or maybe even brand favicon would appear in place of text. Users are already used to seeing symbols appear periodically in tweets. Remember the World Cup soccer ball that everyone loved? And the flags of all the countries competing?

What I like about this idea is the fact that an icon the size of the World Cup soccer ball would only take one or two characters, which is a big deal when you only have 140 characters. Plus, it’s small enough to not take over the whole tweet. But it’s visual enough to draw attention.

It’s just an idea. I’m sure this might annoy some people. Maybe lots of people. But maybe if users could share the profits with Twitter somehow they wouldn’t mind so much or based on the money generated by a user, they could donate a % to a charity of their choice. This is just something I was thinking about. Thoughts?

Some considered Twitter a fad earlier this year. Today, it is a force to be reckoned with.

Twitter’s estimate worth is $1 billion. In February 2008, Twitter was hovering around 475,000 users. eMarketer did research earlier this year and estimated there would be 18 million users by the end of 2009. They were way off! By the end of August 2009, there were 27 million users. And there are no signs it is slowing down any time soon. With Google and Bing adding Tweets to the search results, it means Twitter is here to stay.

How will Twitter deal with the mass number of tweets and maintain Twitter so it’s accessible? At any given time so many people are tweeting, it’s common to see this image when you are trying to tweet.

Twitter is over capacity

And as of today, October 20, 2009, Twitter surpassed 5 billion tweets.

So what are people tweeting about? Someone are talking about themselves. This group of “Meformers” makes up roughly 80% of Twitter users according to a study done by Rutgers University. Meformers generally post updates their everyday lives, feelings, and thoughts. The remaining 20% of users are known as “Informers” and they like sharing information and usually include links to their sources.

Ashton’s stunt isn’t the only thing that has made people join. Others have joined because of the impact Twitter is starting to have on our lives. For example:

Twitter helped people understand what was happening in Tehran and Iran after they had their recent election. Twitter became the way how Iranians communicated with the rest of the world.

Twitter is creating news. It’s the pulse of what’s on people’s minds. And it’s often told later on the evening news. Every second, the trending topics show you what the most popular topics are.

It’s one of the first places people and companies break news.

Shaq and other players were tweeting from the bench–until the NBA banned tweeting from the bench.

Share experiences in real-time with the world. Tweet while you’re at a concert or out shopping. Give minute-by-minute play. When President Obama came to Manassas, Virginia the night before the election, he was supposed to speak at Nissan Pavilion. But he was late. He tweeted the whole way there (i.e. at Dulles airport, stuck in traffic on I-66). I remember the newscasters relying on his tweets to know his whereabouts.

Hate waiting on hold? Many companies are using their Twitter accounts for customer service. Speak with a person and get answers or directed to someone who will help. Home Depot and Geek Squad are two examples.

See things you would never have seen before. Astronaut Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike) actually tweeted pics from space on the shuttle. Lance Armstrong tweeted pics from the hospital when his baby was born earlier this year.

Twitter is helping brands connect with consumers on a whole new level. As an example, there have already been 3 million tweets about the Ford Fiesta. And in April, Ford CEO Alan Mulally answered questions on Twitter. One consumer was undecided after doing a second test drive. Mulally personally called him and won the consumer over.

Twitter Homepage

If you’re not on Twitter yet and want to, but don’t understand how it works. Here’s a few tips to get you started.

YOU WANT TO: Retweet something cool that someone wroteHOW: Put a RT before you paste their message.EXAMPLES: RT @leeclowsbeard Dear jr. (or sr.) team: Before whining about not getting good work produced, try showing some first.
Really nice video. RT @Vejvoda: Did You Know 4.0 – Fascinating, The Economist does it again. http://bit.ly/2LAr7F

YOU WANT TO: PUT A HASHTAG (aka tag your tweet)HOW: Put a # before the hashtag you would like to useEXAMPLES: “The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers for you. ” -Peter Drucker #ims09
Bring Tracy Morgan to Twitter. http://twacy.org “Tell her that you want her privates and your privates to do a high five.” -TM #twacy

YOU WANT TO: POST A URL, BUT IT’S FREAKIN’ LONG. HOW: Paste the URL in BIT.LY first. This site shrinks your URL from 50 characters to around 7.

YOU WANT TO: WRITE SOMETHING, BUT IT’S TOO LONG HOW: Don’t be afraid of using “&” for “and” or “2” for “to” or leaving off punctuation. Example: It’s nice outside. I ran 2 the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument & the Mall this AM. Check out this crazy bird. http://twitpic.com/56748

***Some facts for this article were researched from mashable.com. Follow Mashable on Twitter for great social media news.

This message has gone viral on Twitter in the hope of finding Briant Rodriguez who was kidnapped yesterday, May 4, 2009 in California.

Other posts on Briant Rodriguez’s Twitter page offer few details about the incident like: “3 year-old boy Briant Rodriguez was kidnapped by two men carrying handguns, one estimated to be 18 years old, the other 24 tied up mother.”

So far there are 804 followers, including Sam Ronson, P. Diddy and the person managing this page is requesting the help of aplusk (aka Ashton Kutcher).

@aplusk Please spread the word about little Briant, Ashton. People will pay more attention. He was kidnapped yesterday in California.15 minutes agofrom web

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Twitter helped find and save Briant Rodriguez? If so, Twitter would then be a force to be reckoned with.

I really hope they find Briant Rodriguez. I can’t even imagine having your child kidnapped. Go Twitter! Work your magic!!

Wow! I was already following a few celebrities on Twitter and now there’s an entire site called CelebrityTwitter dedicated to celebs on Twitter. I’m not a fan on the name of the site. But it’s nice that this site does the work for me. Find your favrorite and follow them!

140 characters. That’s what the world is coming to. Say what you gotta say in 140 characters (including punctuations, links, etc.) or less and get out.

I keep hearing on the news that people are blogging less and reading less–thanks in part to the rise of Twitter. Twits are announcing they’re running for governor in California. They’re telling you about exclusive deals. They’re telling you about their adventures, dreams, rants, and discoveries. But in the absolute most concise way. And this has some people scared.

We are becoming a character count society. Google search ads only let you write 25 character headlines and two lines of body copy that are 35 characters each. Yahoo search ads let you write 25 character headlines and body copy with 70 characters. And now with the hugely successful Twitter growing bigger and bigger every day, you have to wonder why are we being limited to character counts and why are we okay with it?

Are we becoming lazy? Is our attention really that freaking small? Can we not handle reading a paragraph?

I’m a digital copywriter and I’m finding that Twitter and the likes are challenging and changing best practicing for writing web content. Bullet points, scanable content, and short bite-size paragraphs were the norm. Is this no longer the case? Will marketers begin creating microsites with just 140 characters of count per page?